Why is this happening?

The "Public Facilities Privacy &
Security Act", also known as "House Bill 2" is a piece of legislation
that was introduced, passed, and signed into law in North Carolina on
March 23rd. The law specifically reduces protections against
discrimination in many ways in the State.

Response to the law has been widespread opposition from many groups and
companies as an attack on equality. On April 15th, Cirque du Soleil
announced their boycotting of the State, joining many others, in protest
of the law.

The social and political ramifications of this situation will likely
take some time to fully unfold, as it's a very complex situation with
widely varying opinions for resolution.

Wikipedia has a page on the lawwhich appears to be keeping fairly good publicly contributed and edited pace with developments should you wish to read more.

AvatarMeet 2016 in flux

This is a special edition of the newsletter that we are disappointed to have to send.

In response to new discriminatory laws in North Carolina; Cirque du
Soleil has cancelled all their North Carolina shows, including the June
24th performance of TORUK that was to be the focus of AvatarMeet 2016.

Many of you have already seenCirque du Soleil's post on facebook.
"Cirque du Soleil believes in equality for all. It is a principle that
guides us with both our employees and our customers. We behave as change
agents to reach our ultimate goal of making a better world with our
actions and our productions." This principal is of course in line with
the themes of Avatar and the feelings of much if not all of the Avatar
fan community. As saddened that we are that this situation has arisen,
and while AvatarMeet remains a non-political organization; AvatarMeet
agrees with Cirque du Soleil's ethics of respect for all and this
action.

This obviously changes the plans for AvatarMeet 2016.

How the plans change is still unclear.

We know that there are many questions about how AvatarMeet will proceed,
and unfortunately the planning team does not yet have all the answers.
We are currently working with our contacts to explore the options open
to the event; and until we know more, any speculation is too early to be
constructive. As we move forward through this process, we will be as
open and expedient as we can to keep everyone informed and resolve this
to the best possible outcome.

While moving quickly to a resolution, we are following a process to
ensure that we don't limit options unnecessarily by making any
uninformed decisions. While this isn't the ideal time to be making
likely quite large changes to the event, we do still have time for a
course correction before the summer.

If you are compelled to take action on your own to cancel or change your
travel plans, you are of course welcome to do so; however we will be
working to help facilitate whatever the final outcome is for everyone.
We are extremely aware that many people have already booked vacation
time, hotel space, and made travel plans with limited change or
cancellation options.

We have already been in contact with Lightstorm Entertainment and Cirque du Soleil, and they are working to help us also.

We have confirmed with the hotel that should the event plans change, our
hotel bookings are all fully refundable for the time being, allowing us
ample time to formulate a plan.

Though we don't yet have many answers; please be patient and don't
hesitate to get in touch if you have specific concerns, or ideas, about
how to proceed. We'll be posting more information as soon as we have
more to share moving forward.

The first thing that everyone can do to help, is to confirm that your profile on AvatarMeet.com is up to date.
The data in the Roll Call is critical for us as we evaluate the
situation. Feel free to use the Notes field in your profile to let us
know of any other issues we should be aware of.

Again, we are disappointed that this situation has arisen; but we are
confident that together as a community we can rise above this challenge
and continue to grow.